{"id":273196,"date":"2026-02-08T02:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273196\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T02:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T02:48:17","slug":"nz-scientists-in-antarctica-trying-to-film-elusive-colossal-squid-set-honey-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273196\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ scientists in Antarctica trying to film elusive colossal squid set honey trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSo essentially we\u2019re flirting and will see who comes along,\u201d Linley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used it on a couple of trips during the last Antarctic summer and got some cool animal sightings, but we didn\u2019t see the big one, so we\u2019re going to have another shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LinleyLinley and Bolstad with a lifesize colossal squid, made by one of Bolstad’s colleagues at AUT, that travelled with them to Antarctica as a mascot last year. It was auctioned for charity at the end of the trip.<\/p>\n

Sightings of the colossal squid, dead or alive, are extremely rare. A female that died after becoming entangled in fishing lines in the Ross Sea in 2007 is a popular exhibit at Te Papa in Wellington \u2013 one of only three large complete specimens that have been recovered and the only one on display. <\/p>\n

Last year, there was a flurry of excitement when Bolstad, a professor at AUT and head of its Squid Squad, was called on to verify video footage of a young squid about 30cm long, south of South America.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe first confirmed live observation of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, in its natural habitat was captured in 2025 by a team on Schmidt Ocean Institute\u2019s research vessel in waters off the South Sandwich Islands.<\/p>\n

Adult colossals remain camera-shy and have never been filmed in their natural habitat. However, scientists believe they exist in large numbers in the Antarctic deep sea. Sperm whales, which are their primary predator, have been found with bellies full of them.<\/p>\n

The squid\u2019s presence has also been felt in the Ross Sea, where New Zealand operates a regulated fishery for Antarctic toothfish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are places down there where toothfish fishers just don\u2019t go any more, because their fish gets stolen by the colossal squid,\u201d said Linley. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, there are actually loads of them. Considering it\u2019s the size of a small car, it\u2019s really good at staying hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MoreMore than 100 new animal species were discovered on this three-week expedition in the Bounty Trough, east of the South Island, in 2024. Photo \/ Rebekah Parsons-King<\/p>\n

Colossal squid have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and rely almost entirely on visual perception.<\/p>\n

The 360-degree camera system Linley and Bolstad have designed is able to operate at extreme depths and uses a particular wavelength of red light invisible to the squid.<\/p>\n

One of the problems with lowering any kind of equipment into the sea is that it can be mistaken for a predator, such as a sperm whale, which sets off flashes of bioluminescence when it descends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what the squid will look out for, this blue comet coming into the deep, so we had to totally rethink the camera,\u201d said Linley, who expects to collect more than 50 hours of video footage during the trip. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no shackles or anything that rattles or bumps. It has a fin, so it doesn\u2019t disturb the water as much as, say, a diving whale would. It\u2019s been a really interesting design challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the camera will look like a squid to a squid, its sonar response shouldn\u2019t trigger any interest from a feeding whale. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the camera system comes back and it\u2019s been chewed, that\u2019s going to be really interesting footage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TeTe Papa curator and deep-sea specialist Thom Linley on an expedition to Antarctica last year.<\/p>\n

Linley and Bolstad\u2019s research has been funded by Pure Ocean, an international endowment fund based in France that supports innovative projects to increase our knowledge of the ocean and protect marine biodiversity.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re travelling with a tourist expedition as onboard experts and will also collect water samples along the way to test for environmental DNA. One area they\u2019re particularly interested in exploring is where New Zealand species end and Antarctic and South American species begin \u2013 and whether there\u2019s anything in between.<\/p>\n

If successful, it will be the longest environmental DNA transect of Antarctica ever done, providing invaluable baseline data. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a part of the world that\u2019s undergoing such incredible change,\u201d Linley said. \u201cCan we make this a time series? Can we see how these species are moving their boundaries as the weather and the temperature change in these water bodies?\u201d<\/p>\n

Linley, who co-presents The Deep-Sea Podcast, is on a mission to change our perception of the ocean\u2019s extreme depths. He said most of the fanged \u201cmonster fish\u201d people tend to picture are so small they could fit into the palm of your hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy the animals look that way is actually really interesting. So we\u2019re trying to take a much more science-forward approach that\u2019s still full of wonder, because the deep sea is amazing. It\u2019s so much more than a monster show.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo essentially we\u2019re flirting and will see who comes along,\u201d Linley said. \u201cWe used it on a couple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21653,21453,41220,16535,9094,593,117531,19473,33443,33213,2883,78,111,43,139,69,9433,1551,82761,1961,61,49723,28355,4767,15391,102,42541,80],"class_list":["post-273196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-adult","tag-antarctica","tag-capture","tag-colossal","tag-elusive","tag-film","tag-flirting","tag-footage","tag-heading","tag-honey","tag-hope","tag-in","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-scientists","tag-set","tag-squid","tag-this","tag-to","tag-trap","tag-trying","tag-weekend","tag-wild","tag-with","tag-worldfirst","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}